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June 8, 2023

Warfare requires deception.  The federal government habitually lies to the American people.  Consider that an admission that it sees itself at war with those it claims to serve.

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You might have noticed that the word “propaganda” has been somewhat retired from polite conversation.  Occasionally, some State-allied news corporation will apply the term to a public statement coming from inside Russia, but otherwise, the idea that governments promote falsehoods cloaked as official truths has quietly disappeared.  

Instead, ordinary information enjoyed and shared among regular people is now targeted for classification.  An alliance of national governments, international institutions, and propaganda engines disguised as disinterested nonprofits has sprung up to toss “unacceptable” thoughts into garbage piles for “mis-,” “mal-,” and “dis-” information trash bins.  As with everything else in modern society, the cult of expertise has even given us “disinformation experts” to decide what knowledge belongs where.  

The small coterie of “disinformation experts” recognized and promoted by governments then monitor what the common people are saying among themselves, cast their nets around anything “unacceptable,” and stigmatize those words and thoughts as deserving of censorship.  Perhaps one day soon there will be academic degrees in “disinformation” or special licenses distinguishing State-approved professionals as qualified to tell the rest of us what is real.  As a rule of thumb, if you want to know what kinds of knowledge governments fear their citizens possessing, look to the subjects that require numerous layers of authority validation before access is granted or titles are conferred.  Now the knowledge that governments fear their citizens possessing is simply information outside their control.  

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In this way, officials have flipped the script on propaganda.  Rather than the people calling out governments for their lies, governments pre-emptively defame their citizens as liars.  How do governments know when their citizens are “lying”?  Easy.  They just isolate anybody who contradicts publicly announced official truths.  Like a puff of smoke vanishing in the wind, government propaganda disappears because anyone who recognizes it as such is guilty of spreading “mis-,” “mal-,” or “dis-” information.  

To find out what is “true,” good citizens are expected to respect the authority of government “disinformation specialists” who target what the people say but never what the government promotes.  Accordingly, government propaganda flows forcefully yet invisibly because nobody is allowed to call it what it is.  The liars have constructed a system in which only they may identify lies.

The question is how long Americans will silently consent to any government dedicated to public deception. 

The longer I have been around to witness how small lies can cause tremendous damage, the more convinced I have become that there is no more precious calling than to seek, protect, and spread truth.  Finding truth is often (if not always) difficult.  Sometimes what we think is true turns out to be false, and we are forced to adjust our understanding of the world accordingly.  Even when gold-tinted “truths” prove pyritic, the search for truth remains priceless.

One of the most effective ways of measuring a man’s (or government’s) character is not to decide whether he is right or wrong about some matter, but rather to determine whether he is committed to pursuing truth or eager to sacrifice it.  A virtuous man will adjust his worldview when confronted with conflicting yet convincing evidence; an unethical man will push falsehoods, no matter how irrational or unreasonable.

The truth-seeker understands that the process of pursuing truth is valuable, even when it provides an incomplete understanding of the world.  In contrast, those who push falsehoods embrace a lie that incomplete knowledge eliminates the possibility for truth.  Honest people see the pursuit of truth as its own reward; dishonest people see its manipulation as a means for scamming honest people.  When the government empowers itself to decide what is true and uses that authority to tell flagrant lies, it wages an information war against its citizens.